Hello.
I hope you’re all having a good morning, afternoon, or evening.
It’s been almost exactly one year, but I’ve returned, and I plan to bring this series back (From the dead? Yikes).
To those who have been waiting, I deeply apologise for disappearing all of a sudden and honestly, I felt especially bad when I belatedly realised that the cliffhanger I dropped it at was a big one.
However, although I’ll be returning to AoS, I plan to do it from the very beginning (hence the ‘Overhaul’ part of the notice title).
What this means exactly is that I’m going through the whole story from start to finish, improving it (hopefully) both for your and my own satisfaction. There are quite a few aspects of the story, as well as certain scenes, that I’d been meaning to go back and redo for quite a long time, so I’m basically rebuilding the shell of the story from the ground up for an overall better story.
Because I’m aware there will be people who won’t want to re-read the same story they already did, especially one that is quite long such as this one, the core of the story will remain pretty much as it was, with very minimal alterations (at least for what I have planned). Still, I thought it’d be a good thing to improve the whole story qualitatively to ensure that you readers will actually know what’s going on when it comes back; it’s been a while after all, so it’s likely that most people forgot what was even going on. Having a better story to read through should help to make that experience as smooth as possible.
Anyway, the main point is that I might change how some events occur and I will add some additional scenes etc., but there shouldn’t really be anything major for you to miss out on should you choose not to re-read it.
Additionally, since I’m basically rebuilding the entire story from the start, I would like to ask for your opinion on how the System messages and Status menu will be presented; the two options I’m on the fence about are to either:
A - Stick with how it was (the blue boxes).
Or
B - Change it to be entirely text-based.
I’ve been deliberating between these two primarily, so I’ll leave an example of how each would be presented here and include a poll at the end of this notice so you guys can choose which you’d prefer since you are whose reading experience this choice will affect.
Here is Option A (the way it was before):
System message example:
Skill 「***」 has been acquired
Status example:
〔Status〕
Name: ***
Class : ***
Level ***
Race : ***
Age : ***
Title : 「***」
Trait : 「***」
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
Health Points (HP) : *** / ***
Mana Points (MP) : *** / ***
Strength: ***
Endurance: ***
Agility: ***
Dexterity: ***
Magic: ***
Wisdom: ***
Luck: ***
Titles : 「***」
Passive Skills : ***
Active Skills: ***
Combat Skills : ***
Magic Skills : ***
Enhancement Skills: ***
Resistance Skills : ***
Perception Skills : ***
Communication Skills : ***
Unique Skills : **
And below are the demonstrations for the purely text-based versions.
System message example:
《 Skill 「***」 has been acquired 》
Status menu example:
❖───❖───❖
〔Status〕
*Name*
Level ***
*Race*
Age : ***
Class : 「***」
Title : 「***」
Trait :「***」
Health Points (HP) : ***/***
Mana Points (MP) : ***/***
Strength : ***
Endurance : ***
Dexterity : ***
Agility : ***
Magic : ***
Wisdom : ***
Luck : ***
Titles : 「***」
Passive Skills : 「***」
Active Skills : 「***」
Combat Skills : 「***」
Magic Skills : 「***」
Enhancement Skills : 「***」
Resistance Skills : 「***」
Perception Skills : 「***」
Communication Skills : 「***」
Unique Skills : 「***」
❖───❖───❖
These are the two options I’ve decided to choose between, so pick whichever one you’d prefer and I’ll stick with it for the entirety of the story. I can also make smaller changes such as making Skills look 【like this】 instead of 「like this」, so just let me know which one feels better to read if you think it’ll improve the experience, otherwise I’ll just keep it how it is.
For the last thing I wanted to mention here, I’ve also been deliberating between keeping it all on one ‘book’ (the one this notice is being posted on), or making a whole new AoS book to publish it on instead. I was originally just going to stick with this one, but I feel rather reluctant to basically erase everything I’ve done so far and replace it all (preserving the history?), so I will likely just make a new book and put the Overhaul on there instead (also so I can make a better cover, haha).
Again, if you have any specific preferences regarding small or technical stuff such as how Skills or System messages are presented, then feel free to let me know and I’ll take it into consideration.
I think that’s all I have to say for now. Honestly, I’d be surprised if even half the people reading this read all the way through but if you did, thank you very much.
And you have all my gratitude for waiting for my rotting work to come back (if you were even waiting at all).
Hopefully this notice comes as a pleasant surprise to you guys, but either way if I can make even one person’s day better by bringing this series back then I’m more than glad to.
As a quick warning, keep in mind that the update schedule for the Overhaul is probably going to be very slow since I’ll be quite busy with other ‘life things’ and have only written like 15% of the Overhaul so far (I planned to have A LOT more done by the time of writing and releasing this notice, but somehow it just turned out this way). I’m also going to keep the chapter length a lot more consistent than they used to be though, so who knows what the release rate will be like.
I’ll probably make the book and publish the first Overhauled chapter in like a week's time or so, so I’ll keep the poll running until around then to give it some time.
Anyway, that’s all for now. Don’t forget to vote on the poll (if you care), and once again, thank you for reading this rather extensive notice (if you actually took the time to sit and read through all this then you’re a real one, love you).
-K